About the Book
Of the great figures in twentieth-century American history, few are as complex and controversial as Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches, he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities, while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of our boldest advocates for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
About the Author :
Manning Marable is a professor of public affairs, history, political science, and African American studies at Columbia University and is the director of the university's Center for Contemporary Black History. He has written or edited 22 books.
G. Valmont Thomas, a longtime member of the acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, has also been a faculty member at the Johnny Carson School of Film and Television at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His voice may also be heard in a number of video games and in advertisements for radio and television.
Review :
"In his revealing and prodigiously researched new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable...vividly chronicles these many incarnations of his subject...Mr. Marable artfully strips away the layers and layers of myth that have been lacquered onto his subject's life--first by Malcolm himself in that famous memoir, and later by both supporters and opponents after his assassination in 1965 at the age of thirty-nine."
-- "New York Times"
"Marable's access to recently declassified FBI documents, the NOI archives, and parts of Malcolm X's diary not previously available contributes to this significant work, which will be consulted by scholars and will interest readers moved by the iconic Autobiography of Malcolm X."
-- "Library Journal (starred review)"
"Thankfully, we have Manning Marable's new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention--which is, simply put, a stunning achievement--to help us better understand Malcolm's complex life."
-- "Philadelphia Tribune"
"Unlike Bruce Perry's 1991 biography, Malcolm, which entertained the most outlandish stories in an attempt to present a comprehensive portrait, Marable's biography judiciously sifts fact from myth."
-- "Atlantic"
"[Marable's] work of scraping away accreted layers of myth to show the complex, conflicted figure of Malcolm X was needed not only for history's sake, but as an antidote to the twin maladies of demonization and hero worship."
-- "Boston Globe"
"A candid, corrective look at the Nation of Islam leader and renegade--and a deeply informed investigation of the evolution of his thinking on race and revolution...A bold, sure-footed, significant biography of enormous depth and feeling."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"Absorbing and well-written, passionate but painstakingly evenhanded...The resulting portrait is that of a man not distorted but more dynamic than we realized, in evolution at every point in his brief but exceptional public life."
-- "Los Angeles Times"
"G. Valmont Thomas's tone of gravitas embodies Malcolm's strengths and flaws: among them, his powerful drive and his failure to envision the possibility of integration. The momentum of Thomas's voice keeps the listener on track with the decades of personal, historical, and political details. Also impressive is Thomas's ability to shade in the voices of diverse African Americans, including well-known figures such as Maya Angelou and Muhammad Ali."
-- "AudioFile"
"It will be difficult for anyone to better this book. It goes deeper and richer than a mere homage to Malcolm X. It is a work of art, a feast that combines genres skillfully: biography, true-crime, political commentary. It gives us Malcolm X in full gallop, a man who died for his belief in freedom, a man whom Marable calls the 'fountainhead' of the black power movement in America."
-- "Washington Post"
"Malcolm X is etched in the American imagination--and the American psyche--in the particular and unyielding terms of radical and militant. Manning Marable has written the definitive biography of this outrageously misrepresented figure. He has plumbed countless historical records to bring out what is there, not what is imagined, about this dominant figure of the twentieth century. Marable brings a lifetime of study to this biography, which is the crowning achievement of a magnificent career."
-- "Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University"
"Manning Marable is the exemplary Black scholar of radical democracy and Black freedom in our time. His long-awaited magisterial book on Malcolm X is the definitive treatment of the greatest Black radical voice and figure of mid-twentieth century. Glory Hallelujah!"
-- "Cornel West, Princeton University"
"Marable accomplishes the difficult task of showing the bad boy of the civil rights era as an actual human being...Each page almost secretes the formidable research into hard facts. Marable lets the chips fall where they may because he is interested in the humanity of Malcolm X, as all true scholars should be."
-- "New York Daily News"
"The towering achievement of this book, which took Marable almost two decades to complete, is his ability to present Malcolm X as a flawed, struggling human being, as much at odds with his government as with himself...Marable succeeds spectacularly in painting a broader and more complex portrait of a man constantly in search of himself and his place in America."
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"The Malcolm book stands as the greatest testament we could have to Manning Marable's brilliance, his passion, and his intellectual fortitude. He devoted his magnificent career--more than most scholars do--to living what he wrote and what he thought. His commitment not only to equality of opportunity but also to the exposure of falsehood and hypocrisy was a hallmark of his pathbreaking work."
-- "Chronicle of Higher Education"
